Christian Betancourt: Building a Free City Bank

“You make it a community issue, and you assign the responsibility to a particular entity. You don’t just leave it in the hands of the central government. You leave it in the hands of a local organization that everybody knows each other, so if you’re not doing things right, you’re going to be ashamed.”

Christian Betancourt is an attorney with experience in banking and finance as well as fintech and legal tech. He is the co-founder and general council at Seshat Bank, a commercial bank that has been licensed in Próspera. Seshat was the first custom regulatory regime that was approved within Próspera leaving Christian with many intriguing anecdotes from his work during this time.

Christian is always very thought-provoking in his conversation and we discuss many ideas including liberty and self determination as well as concepts around the notion of sovereignty.  He also speaks about Honduran ZEDEs, about their history and that of many other autonomous zones around the world.

We finish talking about the process of setting up the bank in Próspera and how he helped create the bank’s own unique regulatory framework as well as discussing a few of Christian’s ideas about the future of banking, especially the roles of cryptocurrencies and Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs).